The All-Too-Youthful Proletarians: Breaker Boys of the Anthracite Coal Region in the Early 1900s

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on The All-Too-Youthful Proletarians: Breaker Boys of the Anthracite Coal Region in the Early 1900s Many Pennsylvanians have long forgotten one of the state’s major claims to national prominence in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries-the anthra­cite coal industry. In those years, clean-burning anthracite heated more homes in the northeastern United States than any other fuel, and a 1,700 square-mile area in northeast Pennsyl­vania produced almost all of the nation’s...
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Susquehanna County: A Touch of New England, 1869-1927

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Susquehanna County: A Touch of New England, 1869-1927 Susquehanna County, one of several counties formed from territory originally claimed by both Connecticut and Pennsylvania, reflects a blend of New England and Pennsylvania traditions. Although the land would remain part of Pennsylvania, the majority of pioneer settlers to this northern tier region were actually from Connecticut and other New England states. It was not until 1787, however, that...
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The Road to Resorts: Transportation and Tourism in Monroe County

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Road to Resorts: Transportation and Tourism in Monroe County Monroe County flourishes today as a lush, verdant resort and popular recreational area on the periphery of metropolitan centers. Tourism is sup­plemented by light industry which has left the largely rural setting relatively intact. Essentially, the county offers open countryside through which travelers make good time on interstate highways on their way to or from major cities and in which they...
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Wyoming County: A Portrait of the Picturesque

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Wyoming County: A Portrait of the Picturesque The Endless Mountains region of northeastern Pennsylvania contains the rurally unspoiled and uncrowded Wyoming County, attracting both visitor and sports enthusiast with its picturesque valleys and charm­ing villages. Fed by the waters of the North Branch of the Susquehanna River, which diagonally bisects the three hundred and ninety-six square mile county, this county lies at the northern end...
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Carbon County: Stone Coal in the Switzerland of America

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Carbon County: Stone Coal in the Switzerland of America Carbon, the primary component of an­thracite coal, is also a county in eastern Pennsylvania – for the same reason. The value of anthracite to the burgeoning industrial revolution of the mid­-nineteenth century created in 1843 a new county from the northern fringes of the once­-immense Northampton County. Beginning in the nine­teenth century, an entire county of coal was carved and moved to...
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Historical Sketch of Luzerne County

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Historical Sketch of Luzerne County The Proclamation Line of 1763 was a stopgap devised to give England a chance to gather her forces and to adopt a policy for further expansion of the American colonies along the Atlantic seaboard. The Treaty at Fort Stanwix in 1768 resulted in a pre-revolutionary division of Indian land to establish a boundary between the Indian hunting grounds and the white settlements. The treaty was the last...
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Lackawanna County: The Last Shall Not Be Least

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Lackawanna County: The Last Shall Not Be Least The history of the Key­stone State’s sixty­-seven counties is often quite similar to family histories. Its portrait is a rich composite of Native American legend and lore, early trans­portation, marine and mari­time heritage, industry and industrialists, pioneers, capitalists and the working classes, religious communes, inventors and the Industrial Revolution …. And the county, whose...
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The Legend of Jay Gould

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Legend of Jay Gould He was the quintessential nineteenth century Robber Baron. One writer called him “The Mephistopheles of Wall Street.” A newspaper editor branded him “one of the most sinister figures that have ever flitted bat-like across the vision of the American people.” He even proclaimed himself “The Most Hated Man in America.” And even though his notoriety stemmed...
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Susquehanna’s Painters

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Susquehanna’s Painters Few Pennsylvanians probably realize that Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Thomas Doughty, Frederick Edwin Church and Jasper Francis Cropsey, the leading lights of the Hudson River school, the famous nineteenth century landscape tradition, painted the Susquehanna River or its tributaries. The most important works of Cropsey and Doughty – hailed as the luminar­ies of the Hudson River school...
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Presence from the Past: A Gift to the Future Through Historic Preservation

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Presence from the Past: A Gift to the Future Through Historic Preservation The United States is a nation and a people on the move. It is in an era of mobility and change … The result is a feeling of rootlessness combined with a longing for those land­marks of the past which give us a sense of stability and belonging … If the preservation movement is to be successful, it must go beyond saving bricks and mortar. It must go beyond saving occasional historic...
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